The Backs (2013)

by Bruce, Alison

  The sky was never totally dark at this time of year but, without the light from the flames, everything below the level of the horizon was black. For the first few steps, Goodhew was illuminated by the pulsing blue light of the nearest fire engine. A little further on and she could pick out his location only by the light from his phone, dancing like a firefly.

  At the top of the slope the two figures nearest to the blue lights had stopped, also watching his progress. One turned and headed down the hill towards Gully, after a few yards solidifying into the familiar shape of PC Kelly Wilkes. She waited until she was up close before asking, ‘Where’s he going?’ The flash of light hadn’t travelled very far, but it was now only a pin-prick.

  ‘I don’t know, but he seemed pretty distracted.’

  ‘By what?’

  Gully shrugged. ‘If it was something I said, then I missed it.’ They stood side-by-side and waited. The road behind them remained empty but, as she turned to check it, Gully ran her gaze over the nearest clumps of trees too. ‘Does it feel to you like we’re being watched, Kell?’

  ‘No, but it would do if I was Goodhew. What is he up to?’

  A slow, single beat of silence followed, then, as if in reply, their radios responded simultaneously: One oblique one.

  They both understood instantly, but Wilkes said it anyway. ‘Shit, he’s found a body.’

  Goodhew had studied maths right through until taking his degree, but it was during his mid-teens that he’d loved it the most. Later, as some of the theories became more abstract, he’d found it less appealing. He liked geometry and the truth and certainty of simpler numbers, the way seemingly random answers could turn out to be linked by the same formula, or a complex quadratic equation unravelled to reveal x as just a straightforward integer. Some people thought that those maths lessons had no bearing on the real world, but his present job was full of all those constants, variables and unknowns – and the pressures that squashed the shape of people’s lives from order into chaos.

  And it was a subconscious distillation of all those things that had led him to suspect that there was more than just the burning vehicle at play here. This didn’t have the hallmarks of a theft gone wrong, or an insurance scam. The car hadn’t been quietly dumped and burnt out in any kind of remote location; instead they’d chosen just about the highest point visible on the Gogs. No, this was the place of beacons and the old semaphore line. It was all about communication.

  The crash barrier and ridge between the carriageways was the only place to stand which would give him a better view of the area than the location of the car itself. He quickly realized, though, that on the Cambridge-bound side there was too much surrounding vegetation to allow a clear view of the Lotus.

  The possibilities were narrowing now.

  He crossed back over the barrier and moved closer to the car, staring into the darkness and using the repetitive flash of the emergency lights to check the trees and hedgerows for a viewing point. It took several seconds before he saw it. About twenty feet before the car itself there was a dip in the hedge, a six-foot-long section where it looked as though the trimmer blade cutting it had slipped and accidentally scooped away the upper eighteen inches. Beyond it was a field, and beyond that a thick line of trees marking the boundary between the farmer’s land and the perimeter of the Gog Magog Golf Club.

  Goodhew drew an invisible line from the car, through the dip in the hedge, and found the silhouetted outline of a treetop that was a few feet taller than its neighbours. The end of his straight line lay just to its left.

  DC Kincaide was within earshot but Goodhew said nothing, because explaining why he wanted to check out the best view of the burning car would have taken longer than simply walking over to it. He used the light from his mobile to pick the right spot, then plunged his way through the hedge. The field had recently been ploughed and Goodhew headed across the deep furrows, taking the most direct route he could, but still aware that he was drifting off course. He paused before getting too close to the trees, and it took him several seconds to locate the single tall tree, then he edged forward again, adjusting and readjusting until he was standing right on a direct line with the Lotus and the dip in the hedge. It was only a few steps from there to move under the edge of the canopy.

  And during those few steps Goodhew glimpsed a flash of paleness in the grass. He knelt close to it, but didn’t touch. A mobile phone case. Cream leather. Feminine. Expensive.

  He remained kneeling, then snapped a photo of it before peering deeper in amongst the trees. Half-word, half-groan: ‘Oh.’

  The man was sitting upright, tied to a tree, his legs taped together in front of him, his hands secured behind his knees. Goodhew moved closer. Thick wire held the man to the tree, wrapped round in three places: waist, chest and neck. He’d suffered extensive head injuries and at some point during his ordeal the man had fought back. As a result, the wire had dug into him, blood seeping out in a heavy band around his throat, and the patches at his armpits were too dark to be sweat alone.

  Dead, obviously and utterly. His face twisted in agony, even in death. Goodhew felt for a pulse in any case, and a remnant of body heat sank through his fingertips.

  Goodhew kept very still; perhaps he’d already disturbed the crime scene, so it was vital nothing should be made worse. Clearly he needed some assistance. A boundary must be set up, a SOCO, the works. However, someone else needed to organize it, because, until they arrived with floodlights and a police photographer, he wasn’t intending to move.

  He could see Kincaide’s figure standing close to the Lotus; Wilkes was up there too, and Gully would still be manning the roadblock, probably choking with boredom by now. He could have just shouted across but, instead, he phoned DI Marks, explained the situation, then waited within hand-holding distance of the corpse.

  The first few minutes he spent on the Internet, then he used the rest of the time just to think. When Marks arrived, Goodhew passed him his phone with the Google image filling the screen. It was simply a head-and-shoulders shot but enough to give the impression of a solid man, a sporty type with a strong jawline and unweathered skin. Indoor sports maybe, or a gym membership, or maybe both? In the photograph his hair looked blow-dried, his face freshly shaven, and he could have modelled men’s grooming products.

  Goodhew double-checked, but really there wasn’t any doubt. ‘The dead man is the Lotus’s owner, Paul Marshall.’

  TWO

  22 August

  Jane Osborne waited until Ady had left for work, then retrieved a packet of Nice ’n’ Easy from behind the detergent box in the cupboard next to the washing machine. The shade was palest blonde; it was a lot to expect from just one application when she’d been darkest brown for the last six months. It didn’t matter even if it came out orange, because the important thing was change. Radical change.

  Her rucksack was ready, stashed out of sight of course, but she didn’t even need to open it to make a mental list of the things she required, and tick them off against its contents.

  While she waited for the new hair colour to take, she changed her clothes, dragging a pair of black Converse trainers, some combat trousers and a vest top out from under her heaviest winter coat. She let her dress slip from her shoulders and stepped out of it, then, illogically, folded it gently and laid it on top of the coat.

  She slammed the drawer shut; there was no way now she was going to stop and think this through again. She’d thought it through plenty. And hers wasn’t a life that had any space for sentimentality.

  By 10 a.m. she was towelling her hair dry; it was definitely blonder, but not blonde enough. She’d do it again later, with more peroxide. She tied it into a ponytail then held it over a carrier bag and hacked it off just a couple of inches below the rubber band. She then knotted the carrier bag and stuffed it into her hip pocket, swung her rucksack over her shoulder, and closed the front door behind her as she left Ady’s flat for the final time.

  She hurried to the end of the
road, then moved on through the next estate, until she’d gone far enough to be confident that none of her neighbours would recognize her while she waited for a bus. She jumped off in the city centre, dumping the carrier bag of hair in the first litter bin she came across. Another two streets and she found a barber’s offering haircuts for £9.50. Her budget had been ten quid.

  His name was Frankie and, once she’d told him what she wanted, he spent the next twenty minutes both asking and answering his own questions: ‘Me? I’m the third generation of the Rona family in Bradford. All barbers, except my brother.’

  Snip, snip.

  ‘My brother? Thought he’d become a chef, but ended up as a optician. Brothers, eh?’

  And so on, until Jane’s hair was shorn to a number two on the sides and a couple of inches of blonde on top. The colour was patchy but she’d sort that out later. She swung the rucksack over her shoulder and shouted ‘Cheers’ to Frankie and left the barber’s shop conscious that she’d used Cheers instead of Thank you, goodbye. It was a small point but confirmed to her that it wasn’t just her physical appearance that had changed overnight.

  She hurried back to the bus stop and handed over the fare for the one-and-a-half-mile journey to Thornbury. She sat upstairs at the back, pretending to doze but quietly checking each bus stop for the unlikely bad luck of seeing someone she knew.

  Armley Branch Road was the second to last stop on this route. She roused herself, then rang the bell and hurried down the stairs.

  She was the only person alighting there, and the driver didn’t open the doors immediately. He looked at her accusingly through his rear-view mirror, bushy dark eyebrows and bags under his eyes. ‘You paid for Thornbury.’

  ‘Yeah, and I fell asleep. If you knew which stop I wanted, why didn’t you wake me? Now I’m screwed.’

  ‘Not my job. You’ll have to pay the extra.’

  ‘I don’t have any fuckin’ money, do I? You’ve had it all.’

  His disembodied eyes blinked. He hadn’t told her not to swear, so she guessed he was remembering the way she’d delved in her pockets, scraping together the last few coppers to make up the fare. She sensed the discomfort of the passengers seated behind her. ‘You’re going to walk back?’ His voice remained impassive.

  ‘What choice do I have?’

  He sighed and finally turned towards her, leaning out of his seat to look at her face to face. ‘The next stop’s the end, then I come back, so if you stay on, then I can drop you at Thornbury.’

  She shook her head. ‘If the inspector’s waiting to get on, then I’ll have to get off there. And we’ll both be in the shit.’

  She liked watching him think; he was so easy to read. ‘Get off, then, and I’ll pick you up on the way back. Twenty minutes.’

  ‘You’re a star. A complete star.’ The doors opened and she stepped out on to the pavement. She beamed up at him, ‘You’ve saved my life.’

  She crossed to the bus stop on the opposite side then waited until the double-decker disappeared around the next bend, a couple of faces still watching her from the rear window until the last moment. Maybe she could’ve risked staying on until the final stop, but this was better – especially if Ady managed to trace her progress this far. Overall, she doubted that he’d even bother.

  On foot, she followed the bus route into Leeds city centre, pausing only as she caught sight of her reflection in the dark window of an empty shop. Her make-up was wrong, still signifying old Jane. She needed paler foundation and black eyeliner and mascara, darker lipstick also. Hairspray too, or maybe one of those rock-hard styling mousses that would keep her hair in aggressively rigid tufts.

  She remembered that there was a branch of Boots the Chemist inside Leeds railway station. Perfect. Buy one, get four free.

  Her visit to the make-up shelves was swift. She stood with her back to the security camera, picking up one item with her right hand whilst her left pocketed the one she really wanted. One, two, three, four – done. She spent marginally longer in the hair-care section, wanting to be sure of not being shadowed before she approached the till to pay. She chose a travel-size tube of Boots’ own maximum-hold hair gel for £1.99, then paid, by breaking into the first of her £20 notes.

  She made it less than ten paces outside before a dull-haired woman in a plum overcoat stepped in front of her. ‘You have items . . .’ she began.

  Jane glanced down at the woman’s shoes: square-toed courts and she didn’t look like a runner. Jane stepped back, then spun through one-eighty, straight into the arms of a depressingly fit-looking security guard. He grabbed her wrist in one hand and her rucksack with the other, pulling it from her shoulder with a decisive tug. It was as if he knew that she wasn’t going to think about bolting without it. It held the start of her new life. She knew what would come next, and, suddenly staying home with Ade didn’t seem so unappealing.

  THREE

  The phone call from DS Tierney of Leeds CID was answered by DI Marks at a little after 2 p.m. Tierney sounded harassed: ‘Got a woman in custody, mid-twenties, picked up for shoplifting. No previous, but we got a match on her prints. Flags up that we need to contact you lot.’

  ‘What’s her name and why do we want her?’

  ‘Calls herself Jane Franklin.’

  Marks felt the back of his neck prickle. The first name was correct.

  Tierney tutted then rattled on, ‘It doesn’t even say why you want her, and it’s old – like seven years old.’

  Marks nodded to himself. ‘Can you email her photograph to me?’

  ‘Look, I don’t want her in here. We’re talking twenty quid’s worth of cosmetics, so I want her charged and released.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’ve got her home address, and she won’t do a runner for only that much.’

  Marks leant his elbows on the desk, the handset close to his mouth. ‘DS Tierney, I said “no”. Forget the photograph. You have a fingerprint match. I need to speak to her in relation to a murder investigation and if you let her go anywhere whatsoever, you will soon appreciate the real meaning of stress. Is that clear?’

  Tierney muttered an apology.

  Marks continued, ‘Has she called anyone yet?’

  ‘Doesn’t want to. Just tells us to piss off.’

  ‘But you have her home address?’

  ‘A flat in Allerton, Bradford . . . was living there with an Adrian Cole. She said they’ve split up and he wouldn’t miss her.’

  ‘We’ll have someone there by midnight.’ So Jane wasn’t cooperating, and she had no incentive to stay in the area. How was that not a flight risk? ‘Don’t lose her,’ he warned, ending the call. He then leant back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. The paint was uneven and grey with age. ‘Oh, hell,’ he sighed. He closed his eyes and felt pretty much like the ceiling looked.

  Seven years was a while ago in some ways, but not so many in others. Finding Jane was good news. Seeing her in person would be harder.

  Marks blew out a long slow breath, and went to find Sergeant Sheen.

  Finding was the wrong word, Sheen would be at or within touching distance of his desk, surrounded by notes and files, and shelves heavy with even more of the same. Sheen’s ‘office’ occupied an open-ended cul-de-sac on the second floor. It had a good view of Parker’s Piece and was overlooked by no one else.

  Sheen sat with the Cambridge News open in front of him. He glanced up at Marks, and pushed the paper to one side. ‘It is work-related, you know,’ he said slowly in his Suffolk drawl. Several blocks of text had been outlined or highlighted.

  Sheen had been at Parkside for his entire career and now, with retirement on the middle horizon, it seemed to Marks that the Sheen technique of colour-coding and cross-referencing had been honed to an art. No one else knew three decades’ worth of Cambridge people and crimes like Sheen did.

  ‘D’you have a minute, Tom?’

  Sheen nodded, nudging the spare chair towards him. ‘Unusual to see you up here.’
<
br />   Marks ignored the chair. ‘Jane Osborne’s turned up.’

  ‘Has she now? Where?’

  ‘Caught shoplifting in Leeds. We’ll get her back down here before we talk to her.’

  ‘Poor kid.’ Sheen paused respectfully for a moment. ‘And how can I help? I doubt many people know that case like you do.’

  Marks gave a grunt, not minding which way Sheen interpreted it. ‘I am curious about anything else you’ve picked up since the case was closed.’

  Sheen’s instant reaction was to swivel his chair so he could look directly up at the top shelf on the wall behind his desk. He then reached for a fat green lever arch about two-thirds of the way along. ‘Big file that one. Maybe you should sit down.’

  This time the DI took Sheen up on his suggestion. ‘You know Greg Jackson’s still in the area?’

  ‘Of course I know . . . probably me that told you.’ Sheen underlined this by smacking the green file on to the desktop, where several loose sheets of papers quivered and backed up by a couple of inches. ‘He’s a local boy, wasn’t going anywhere else once he was released.’ He slid his hand inside the file and parted its contents at the first page of the third and largest section. ‘The Osborne murder takes up a big chunk of this one.’ He flicked through a few pages at a time. ‘Not much since, to be honest. The mother left town, the dad’s still here – and so is the son. But there’s one clipping you need to see.’

  Sheen found the relevant page and spun the file round to face Marks, who nodded as he recognized the headline, Exhibit Destroyed. ‘Yes, I remember. The press jumped on it.’

  ‘They thought it might be a publicity stunt.’ Sheen pursed his lips. ‘I’m ignoring your own feelings on the case when I say this, but I later discovered he’d smashed that item on the day he heard about Jackson’s parole.’

  ‘No, I hadn’t heard that.’ Marks sat very straight as he attempted to remain detached. He pictured Gerry Osborne, hatchet in hand, destroying his own centrepiece sculpture. Did it help to know the catalyst for that? Probably not. ‘Why does it matter now?’